Bluenose, Canada`s most famous schooner, made its mark almost

HAIDA G
STEPHEN BLAKELY
For most American cruisers, the Pacific Northwest stops at the U.S. border and the San Juan Islands, but the scenery and cruising only get better
the farther you go up the British Columbia coast.
Among the very best of Canada’s Pacific Northwest destinations is
the Haida Gwaii archipelago, at the nation’s farthest point both north
and west. Once known as the Queen Charlotte Islands, they are closer
to Alaska than the Canadian mainland and are packed with countless
protected anchorages, mountain wilderness, spectacular wildlife and a
unique native culture.
On many levels, there’s no place on Earth like it. Biologists call these
islands the “Galapagos of the North” because parts escaped glaciation
during the last ice age, allowing many plants and animals to evolve in
ways found nowhere else. Haida Gwaii’s black bears are the largest of
the species; its damp, verdant, temperate rainforests are known as the
“moss capital of the world”; and just one corner of its incredibly rich
waters has more marine biodiversity than anywhere else on the planet.
Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve covers the southern tip of Haida
Gwaii, as well as the ocean 6 miles offshore, making it the only national
park in the world protected “from mountain top to sea bottom.” The
wilderness park can be reached only by boat or seaplane — there are no
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roads, airports or docks — and it boasts a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Gwaii Haanas and its surrounding islands are so remote, beautiful and
unspoiled that National Geographic Traveler magazine ranked it No. 1
among Western Pacific U.S./Canada national parks as a travel destination, topping far more famous — and crowded — U.S. vacation spots
such as Grand Canyon, Crater Lake and Volcanoes national parks.
Haida Gwaii is also the most seismically active place in Canada; it sits
on a fault line of the Pacific Rim. The two strongest earthquakes in Canada occurred here, most recently a 7.7-magnitude quake in 2012.
The indigenous Haida settlements date back more than 10,000 years
and are among the oldest in North America. Known for their dramatic
art and complex social structure (divided into Eagle and Raven clans),
the Haida have staged a political revival in recent years and are a First
Nation to be reckoned with again: The national park was created only
because they waged a shrewd campaign of civil disobedience in the
1980s to stop clear-cut logging of their ancestral lands and cultural heritage there. The outcome was a unique compact that made the Haida and
the Canadian federal government fully equal partners — neither with
majority rule — in running the park.
To mark the 20th anniversary of that landmark compromise, the
STEPHEN BLAKELY
By
Reprinted by permission of Soundings, LLC
1/23/15 3:07 PM
JAMES THOMPSON (2 WILDLIFE IMAGES); STEPHEN BLAKELY (2)
A GWAII
Haida and Parks Canada in 2013 raised a 42-foot-tall ceremonial pole
at the site of protests that led to the national park, the first Haida poleraising in that area in more than 130 years. Behind the symbolism, and
the joint potlatch, or feast, that followed, is an extraordinary reconciliation between tribal nation and federal government.
Wild waters
In area, Haida Gwaii — “island of the people,” in the Haida language
— is a bit larger than Delaware. Its main islands are Graham, in the
north, where most of the 5,000 or so inhabitants live, and Moresby, in the
south, which includes the national park.
Eco-tourism by boat has been growing since the park was created.
Birding is among the best on the West Coast — 1.5 million nest on Haida
Gwaii. Bald eagles abound, and on my recent trip we also saw such exotics as tufted puffins, sandhill cranes and rhinoceros auklets, among others.
Humpback whales visited our boat almost daily, and we also met pods of
orcas, Steller sea lions and Dall’s porpoise — favorite prey of the orcas —
sharks and mola mola, which are huge ocean sunfish.
Fishing here is world-class, as Haida Gwaii sits on the migratory path
of chinook, coho and chum salmon. Groundfish (halibut, lingcod and
rockfish) and shellfish (crabs and prawn) are also abundant. Of course,
there are fishing guides and lodges.
Haida Gwaii is a boater’s paradise in many ways. Its southeastern
side has lots of small islands, wonderfully secluded coves and sheltered
coastline, but both the mountainous land and turbulent waters are serious and unforgiving. There are good reasons only experienced cruisers
with well-equipped boats should come on their own; others should join
a crewed tour.
The tidal range is extreme — as much as 26 feet between high and low
— and currents can run 6 or 7 knots in the Houston-Stewart Channel, the
main link between the Pacific side of Haida Gwaii to the west and Hecate Strait to the east. Tides are mixed semidiurnal, bringing two highs
and two lows each day, and each high and low differs from the one
before. Rain and fog are common even in the “dry” month of August, so
visibility can be limited at any time. The few navigation aids that exist
out here are small, dim and not easily seen.
Using the GPS requires skill with Canadian charts. Depending on
your location and how close in or out the plotter is scaled, depths will be
displayed variously in fathoms and feet, meters or just feet. Unless you
know what to look for, there’s no warning that the units of measurement
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shown on the screen may have changed. That’s because the source paper
charts by the Canadian Hydrographic Service that the electronic ones are
scanned from vary in their units of measurement, and differently scaled
charts of the same area often use different units of depth.
For instance, the most useful paper chart of Gwaii Haanas (No. 3853,
Cape St. James to Cumshewa Inlet) displays depths in both fathoms and
feet for depths less than 11 fathoms: “43” means 4 fathoms plus 3 feet, or
a total depth of 27 feet, reduced to the lowest normal tide. A “12” indicates 12 fathoms, or 72 feet. However, if you scale in closely on the GPS,
the digital cartography will switch to a different large-scale source chart
(showing a small area) that could use either meters or feet.
Haida Gwaii is a submerged mountain range, so water tends to be
deep here, but recognizing what the numbers are telling you is essential to staying off the sharp volcanic rock. “With complex underwater
topography, tides that ebb or flood more than 3 vertical feet an hour
and the potential for rapid weather changes, it’s critical that mariners
here always know their precise positions and stay up to date on the latest weather forecasts and conditions,” says Russell Markel, owner and
captain of Passing Cloud, a classic 70-foot wooden schooner, who has run
weeklong eco-expeditions to Haida Gwaii for more than 10 years.
A frequent threat close to shore is floating olive-green kelp fronds —
the only visible sign of often huge underwater kelp forests — that easily
foul the prop.
Prevailing summer winds are from the northwest, although in my
week of sailing it came from every corner of the compass except due
east, so even the “protected” eastern side of Haida Gwaii can get
hammered. The western side is exposed to the Pacific and should
Passing Cloud’s
owner Russell
Markel offers
expedition cruises
and educational
programs; the
saloon (right) is
cozy and bright.
B
luenose, Canada’s most famous schooner, made its mark almost
a century ago fishing and racing in the Atlantic off Nova Scotia.
Today, a direct cousin of Bluenose is still sailing off Canada’s
other coast, in the Pacific Northwest: Passing Cloud.
Bluenose was the 17th William Roué design, and he went on to create
more than 100 commercial vessels and yachts. One of them (No. 165 in
his portfolio) was Passing Cloud, but Roué did not live to see her sail.
She wasn’t built until 1974, almost 30 years after he drew it and four
years after he died at age 90.
Blame it on bureaucracy. Roué designed the boat for a 1945 contest
sponsored by the new United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration as part of a program to help China recover from World War II. The
design was to provide a simpler, stronger and short-handed alternative to
the Chinese junk to revitalize coastal fishing and freighting.
Roué’s plan won the design contest, but the agency dissolved two
years later without financing a single boat. The drawings sat for almost three decades until Brian Walker, a commercial boatbuilder in
Victoria, British Columbia, dusted them off to build a yacht he and his
wife could sail around the world — the only boat ever built to Roué’s
award-winning design.
Smaller, tough and fast
At 70 feet overall and 50 tons displacement, Passing Cloud is less than
half the size of Bluenose, at 143 feet and 128 tons. However, similarities
50
between the two are unmistakable. Both share the clean, beautiful lines
of a classic wooden schooner — two masts, sails fore and aft, with both
the main and fore mast stepped nearly amidships. Both were designed
for strength and functionality to excel in heavy weather. And both proved
fast, especially in powerful winds.
Bluenose won all of its four contests against the best U.S. boats in the
International Fisherman’s Trophy Race from 1921 to 1938. Passing Cloud,
very fast to windward, dominated schooner races up and down the West
Coast in the 1980s and won the 1984 Master Mariners Heritage Race in
San Francisco — the only Canadian boat to win that event. Mounted in
the boat’s wheelhouse are 36 brass plaques of race and heritage show
awards. (For more on Bluenose, search “Rebirth of an Icon” at Soundings
Online.com.)
A boatbuilder’s boat
As a commercial builder, Walker had the skills to modify Passing Cloud
to his tastes. It took him five years to collect the white oak for the boat’s
frames because much of that hard and popular wood is used for furniture
and whiskey barrels. He eliminated the bowsprit and changed the original
gaff rig to a Marconi rig to simplify sail handling. Walker also designed
and built the hydraulic windlass still used to handle thousands of pounds
of chain and ground tackle. A striking stainless steel boomkin, arching up
off the stern, raises the aft rigging off the deck and supports the massive
main boom.
(FROM LEFT) STEPHEN BLAKELY (INSET); JAMES THOMPSON (2); STEPHEN BLAKELY
By Stephen Blakely
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be visited only in calm weather. Conditions there can change fast,
especially when strong tides oppose ocean swells and winds. Cape
St. James, the very southern tip of Haida Gwaii, has measured 98-foot
waves and 100-mph winds in winter. One Canadian Fisheries and
Oceans report warns that the sea west of Haida Gwaii has one of the
“most severe offshore wave climates in the world.”
Getting around
Because of the difficulty of reaching Gwaii Haanas National Park,
the remote wilderness, and park licensing and visitor restrictions, most
people come on crewed liveaboard tour boats (both power and sail) or
on sea kayak camping expeditions. A park permit is needed, groups are
limited to no more than a dozen at the Haida village sites, and an orientation session is required before you go ashore.
During my recent trip, it took two days and four airplanes from the
East Coast to reach Markel’s boat in Haida Gwaii, the final leg being a
delightful flight on a classic six-passenger de Havilland Beaver floatplane. Ten of us spent a week exploring the islands aboard the schooner
Passing Cloud. Active, small-group wilderness excursions such as this
tend to be self-selecting, so our crew meshed well.
Markel bills his expeditions as a “soft adventure” because they
include physical activity — scrambling along rugged shores and hiking through thick woods, serious sailing and swimming in the Pacific
— leavened with comfort: private two-person cabins, down duvets,
a warm cast-iron stove in the main saloon, all meals prepared from
scratch by a professional chef, and good wine.
Markel is a marine biologist and brings along a Ph.D. biologist,
“Chart chat”
at the end of
the day.
archaeologist or anthropologist to help identify the sea and bird life
and interpret the cultural heritage while he runs the boat. Their deep
knowledge of wildlife, traditional tribal practices and friendships
with local Haida will open your eyes to a stunning world of strange
creatures and amazing history. It is a fun, immersive and sometimes
emotional experience, especially when visiting local Haida.
Of course, an adventure such as this is not inexpensive: A week’s journey runs about $4,000 a person, including food, floatplane and park fees
but not airfare, which is typically $1,200 or more round-trip from the
East Coast. Each passenger is limited to 40 pounds of luggage — so the
continued on Page 54
with hot-and-cold water vanities and fluffy duvets — are off the saloon,
with additional guest quarters in the aft cabin (two double berths) and
crew quarters in the fo’c’sle. There are two heads.
A 6-cylinder 140-hp Volvo drives the boat as fast as 10 knots, and with
1,600 gallons of fuel, Passing Cloud has a cruising range of as much
as 9,000 miles. The engine room, directly below the deckhouse, is big
enough for a built-in workbench. Three-inch-thick cedar bulkheads divide
the hull into five watertight compartments, and the boat exceeds Transport Canada standards for stability and safety. Passing Cloud is certified
to carry as many as 14 overnight passengers but typically carries eight
guests and four crewmembers.
For a 40-year-old wooden boat, her hull is remarkably tight, quiet and
leak-free, a testament to the quality of Walker’s construction. As a 2012
survey noted, Passing Cloud “is constructed from exceptional materials,
is exceptionally well-built and is exceptionally well-maintained.”
Her new life
Walker’s most dramatic change to the Roué design is a classic West
Coast pilothouse amidships, with a 180-degree view, to protect the
helmsman from the rainy, cold and blustery weather of the Pacific Northwest. (A second steering station at the stern is used in good weather.)
The pilothouse, gleaming with brass, has a spacious chart table, galley
and dining area, and dry access to the stern cabin below deck.
The masts were cut from a single 71-foot Sitka spruce, and the rig can
carry as much as 4,000 square feet of sail, spread among the main (1,000
square feet), foresail, two genoas, and large and small topsails. Part of
the beauty of the schooner design is that the sail plan can be balanced
for the conditions. On my trip, under occasional near-gale conditions, just
the foresail and genoa drove the boat fast and comfortably.
The decking is 2-inch-thick Burmese teak recycled from a legendary
British Columbia coastal steamer, the SS Cardena, scrapped in 1958.
Below, the spacious and comfortable saloon of red and yellow cedar
exudes warmth from new paint and varnish and a cast-iron diesel stove,
brightened by natural light from a big hatch. Three private cabins — each
After Walker and his wife retired from sailing, they sold Passing Cloud
to another resident of Victoria, who put the boat into sail training. That
role has been continued by the boat’s current owner, Russell Markel, a
marine biologist from Victoria who bought the boat in 2012 for his Outer
Shores Expeditions (outershores.ca). He provides weeklong liveaboard
“soft adventure” expedition cruises and for-credit educational programs
through the Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve and several other coastal wilderness areas in British Columbia.
Markel has an ideal background for leading trips such as this, beyond the fact that he grew up here and has spent years diving and
doing research. For nine years, he spent summers leading eco-tours
throughout Gwaii Haanas National Park as captain of a similar sailboat, Island Roamer. In addition to being a patient and natural teacher,
he tries to inspire others with his passion for this region’s unspoiled
nature and the importance of protecting it — “sailing with a purpose,”
as he calls it.
“When I saw this boat, I fell in love with it,” Markel says, “not just for
what it was but for what it could allow me to do.”
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Voyagers aboard
Passing Cloud
are treated to the
region’s diverse
marine life.
sea urchins. My favorite was the bizarre sunflower star
— the world’s biggest (more than 3 feet wide) and fastest (4 feet per minute) starfish.
s7INDY"AY on Lyell Island, is a former village and the
site of the 1985 Haida protests. More than 70 Haida blockaded logging equipment and were arrested, sparking a worldwide
movement to save the forest and causing the federal and provincial
governments to create Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve. These
events were commemorated in August 2013 with the raising of the
Gwaii Haanas Legacy Pole, carved in the classic Haida style with 17
characters representing the life, legends and history of the islands.
HAIDA GWAII from Page 51
floatplane can take off — so bring practical clothes you can live in for a
while. Fresh water is limited, so don’t expect a daily shower. And a level
of fitness is essential; you must be able to climb in and out of the dinghy,
bushwhack through rough woods and hills, and scramble about the boat.
What you’ll see
Markel tailors his tours to the weather, so there is no set itinerary. But
key attractions are never missed.
s 3'ANG 'WAAY (formerly known as Ninstints), once a major Haida
village on Anthony Island at the far southwestern corner of Haida
Gwaii, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Remains of old long houses
and a unique stand of original Haida mortuary and memorial poles provide a window into the rich culture that once flourished here.
s 4ANU also was once a major Haida village on the eastern shore, its
long house ruins now moss-covered and returning to the earth. This is
the ancestral village and burial place of world-renown contemporary
Haida artist Bill Reid.
s "URNABY .ARROWS on the east side of Moresby Island, is a shallow
tidal waterway (about a half-mile long and 160 feet wide) that has an extremely rich nutrient content and supports the highest known levels of
biomass — 293 species — of any intertidal zone in the world. Among the
examples Markel brought to the surface to show us: multicolored bat stars,
several types of crabs, sea cucumbers, moon snails and squirming, bristling
54
Part of what makes the Haida culture unique is that it has survived. The tribe was nearly exterminated twice — first by disease
and later by the federal government. In the mid-1800s, the Haida
population began to collapse from European diseases such as
smallpox. Of the 10,000-plus Haida alive at first contact, fewer than
600 were left by 1900. Survivors consolidated in northern Graham
Island, mostly in the present-day villages of Skidegate and Masset.
In the late 1800s a national “assimilation policy” forcibly took
150,000 native children across Canada, including Haida, from
their families to be raised in boarding schools subject to white
culture, language and religion. As a government investigation
would later document, the children’s “education” included rampant physical and sexual abuse, starvation and death.
After the scandal broke, the Canadian government closed the
schools, paid $2 billion in reparations — the largest class-action
payout in Canadian history — and launched a national reconciliation effort to rebuild the shattered native cultures. But for the
Haida, it was the logging protests near Windy Bay that marked
the end of their “silent years” and the rediscovery of their legendary fighting spirit.
Unlike other tribes, the Haida never signed any treaty with the Canadian government ceding control of their homeland. Neither side
could prove legal ownership of the islands, so the two sides “agreed
to disagree about ‘title’ to Haida Gwaii,” says Peter Lantin, president
of the Council of the Haida Nation. They settled on a unique powersharing arrangement to jointly protect the park, which is why Gwaii
Haanas is called a park “reserve.” Full national park status awaits
settlement of land claims.
Today, the Haida are actively working to rebuild their culture, revive
their native language, and regain possession of artifacts and human remains
taken decades ago. A rediscovery program for young Haida teaches tribal
history, legends, art and wilderness skills, including how to handle their
ancestral canoes. They even started a cultural exchange with the tribe most
like their own: the Maori of New Zealand, also a matrilineal, island-based
society with a similar history of seafaring, warfare and art.
The Haida consider themselves children of the ocean, land and sky,
and one of their core beliefs is to live in balance with nature. Since a
Canadian Supreme Court decision gave the tribe control of logging
licenses on Haida Gwaii, timbering has been sharply reduced and environmental protections added.
A key reason Haida Gwaii is such a beautiful place today — and is
likely to remain so — is because the Haida have a say in its future once
again. “Our way of life was our religion,” says Sean Young, a Haida
Watchman at the Ninstints UNESCO site on Anthony Island. “Live off
the land. Live off the ocean. Take only what you need.” n
JAMES THOMPSON
Legacy Pole’s tragic legacy
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efore the arrival of Europeans, the Haida were the dominant culture among coastal First Nations in Canada’s
Pacific Northwest, and their unique war canoes were a
key reason.
With plentiful food and towering evergreens on Haida Gwaii, the natives there had the time and resources to develop a boat like no other
in the region. Their canoes were the only ones capable of crossing the
60 miles of Hecate Strait between Haida Gwaii and the coast, allowing
them to raid and trade with mainland villages — without fear of counterattack — and range from present-day Alaska to Vancouver.
The Haida also had a size advantage: Thanks to their protein-rich
seafood diet, the average Haida man in the 1700s stood 6 feet tall and
towered over mainland natives and most Europeans.
A lightning raid by a fleet of Haida canoes would have been terrifying. Each boat was filled with two dozen hulking warriors in wooden
helmets and war coats of thick sea lion or elk skin, armed with
painted war paddles (points sharpened to a spear, edges shaved to a
blade), and chanting battle cries. Early European sailors called them
the “Vikings of the Pacific Northwest.”
Haida canoes were made from a single carefully picked cedar.
Felled in the fall, the tree would be burned and carved over the winter into a dugout as large as 50 feet and 3/4-inch thick. The Haida
design made two key two changes to the traditional dugout canoe.
The bow and stern were raised and given long overhangs, and the
sides were flared outboard by filling the dugout with water, steaming
it with red-hot stones and pushing the gunwales apart with branches.
The result was a graceful 1.5-ton canoe able to hold as many as 40 people and navigate large seas without swamping. Haida paintings added
to a canoe’s appearance. A singer/drummer in the bow kept time for the
paddlers, and an oarsman in the stern steered. Each canoe typically carried a shaman or medicine man to catch and destroy the souls of enemy
warriors in advance of battle.
Haida women also were skilled boat handlers and sometimes went to war alongside the men. Feared among mainlanders,
they typically came for vengeance and
fought more savagely than the men. “The
land tribes, if they saw a Haida canoe with a
woman in armor in front or a
canoe full of Haida women, that’s
when they’d say, ‘Let’s run!’ The
women would be there for revenge,”
says Sean Young, a watchman at the
SGang Gwaay World Heritage Site on
Anthony Island.
Scan this
The Haida had an oral culture, and the
with your mobile
device for video of
skills to build these canoes were lost durthe author’s trip
ing the smallpox epidemics that almost anto Haida Gwaii
and the Legacy
nihilated the tribe in the mid-1800s. Revival
Pole raising
of the modern Haida canoe is credited to the
contemporary Haida artist Bill Reid, who stud52
ied the original canoes in museum collections.
Reid carved the first modern Haida canoe, named Lootaas (“wave
eater”), for the 1986 Expo in Vancouver, and Haida paddlers learned how
to use the 50-footer by trial and error. The following year, the Haida paddled it 300 miles up the British Columbia coast and across Hecate Strait for
an emotional homecoming — the first time in more than a century that a
traditional canoe had landed on the shores of Haida Gwaii.
New canoes are now carved at the Haida Heritage Center in Skidegate as part of the tribe’s cultural rediscovery program. Haida canoe
races there are a regular event.
Reid saw the canoe as the single most important artifact to the native peoples of the Pacific Northwest. Lootaas inspired his largest and most famous
work of art: a bronze sculpture called The Spirit of Haida — a near-life-size
Haida canoe manned by 13 mythological figures of Haida legend.
Two castings were made. One, known as The Jade Canoe, greets
travelers at the international wing of Vancouver International Airport. The Black Canoe is the only outdoor work of art displayed at the
Canadian Embassy in Washington, D.C., near the Capitol. n
Bill Reid’s sculpture
The Black Canoe
(left) and a modern
Haida canoe.
STEPHEN BLAKELY
By Stephen Blakely
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